Sherman Alexie is one of my favorite authors. His book “The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven” is one of the only books I’ve read that has made me cry openly in public. Heart-wrecking, wrenching sobs. Yes it was embarrassing, but totally worth it.
This poem, “Reservation Love Song,” makes one think of simple love, family, and tradition. But more.
I can meet you
in Springdale buy you beer
& take you home
in my one-eyed Ford
I can pay your rent
on HUD house get you free
food from the BIA
get your teeth fixed at IHS
I can buy you alcohol
& not drink it all
while you’re away I won’t fuck
any of your cousins
if I don’t get too drunk
I can bring old blankets
to sleep with in winter
they smell like grandmother
hands digging up roots
they have powerful magic
we can sleep good
we can sleep warm
Known in part for his social commentary, Alexie does wonderful justice to the expression of individual empowerment in the face of disempowerment. There appears to be a lack of masculine power in this courtship, and from a romantic angle, this poem seems to be the lover’s answer to the beloved’s “reservation.”
And because I love Alexie’s work:
Evolution
Buffalo Bill opens a pawn shop on the reservation
right across the border from the liquor store
and he stays open 24 hours a day, 7 days a week
and the Indians come running in with jewelry
television sets, a VCR, a full-length beaded buckskin outfit
it took Inez Muse 12 years to finish. Buffalo Bill
takes everything the Indians have to offer, keeps it
all catalogued and filed in a storage room. The Indians
pawn their hands, saving the thumbs for last, they pawn
their skeletons, falling endlessly fron the skin
and when the last Indian has pawned everything
but his heart, Buffalo Bill takes that for twenty bucks
closes up the pawn shop, paints a new sign over the old
calls his venture THE MUSEUM OF NATIVE AMERICAN CULTURES
charges the Indians five bucks a head to enter.
See an analysis of this poem: Buffalo Bill and the confiscation of culture.
UPDATE — Streak saw Alexie speak last week and offers a couple of insights gleaned from his lectures.
I particularly like this quote: “Liberal males only objectify women in their peripheral vision.”